Friday, Movember 30, 1984/The Battalion/Page 3
Alistair Cooke disgruntled
over TV election coverage
Warped
by Scott McCullar
By ROBIN BLACK
Senior Staff Writer
‘If you want to start a protest
farch about television election cov
erage, I will be at the head of it,” Al
istair Cooke said Thursday at Texas
A&M.
HCooke, the featured speaker of
theE. L. Miller Lecture Series, spoke
in|204C Sterling C. Evans Library.
■“I hope that before the next elec
tion the three networks get together
ami decide what things to cover, and
these exit polls,”
especially to stop i
Cooke said. “In fa
should make it illegal.”
■Cooke discussed the media’s influ
ence on the election process in his
last of three addresses this week,
ft He said he is concerned “in a quiet
wav" about the extent networks go to
cover primaries and the elections.
lEaeh network has about 250 people
at a primary where less than five
percent of the registered voters turn
out, he said.
“Going into a network before a
primary would be like walking into
an advertising agency that had just
laid out $10 million to promote a
new soft drink,” he said, referring to
the amount of effort and money the
networks put into covering the pri
maries.
Cooke said the network’s heavy
coverage of the elections often gives
voters misconceptions of what really
goes on.
For example, he said, most view
ers could be led to believe that more
people play an active role in the
process than actually do.
“The whole method of television
is deception,” Cooke said.
A reflection of this is seen in the
coverage of the primaries, he said.
? Loan system discussed by senate
By KARI FLUEGEL
Staff Writer
Student senate members dis-
f a loan system for student ac
tivities participants in a closed meet
ing after tne senate’s regular
imeeting Wednesday night.
■Student senate Speaker Pro
MAa Tempe Eric Thode said the senate
IlSHdno plan or proposal written for
1 the loan system.
■The loan system would benefit
iberal\4:students who are discouraged from
Hy atom, becoming active in student activities
he perver such as student government, the Me
morial Student Center, the Resi
dence Halls Association and Off-
Campus Aggies because of financial
hardships — for example, students
who must work to pay for their edu
cation.
The loan system would be set up
to provide low interest loans to orga
nization members who could prove
financial need.
“It would be a loan fund system
not a payment system,” Thode said.
“In no way would this be set up to
pay the (student government) offi
cers like they do at UT.”
Thode said if the system was set
up, he doubted that the money
would come from the students. He
said the money would probably
come from outside sources such as
former students.
The senate is researching the situ
ation to determine if there is a need
for such a loan system. If the need is
determined, a proposal would be
drafted and presented to the senate,
Thode said.
If a proposal is submitted, Thode
said it would probably be presented
to the senate early next semester.
iHt,, Workers burn buses in Peru
Police disperse strikers
United Press International
( u «|LIMA, Peru — Police enforcing a
state of emergency fired tear gas and
ote libel: water cannon Thursday to disperse
rnmetKc hundreds of workers and students
; fascism who blocked roads and burned
tionalism: buses during a general strike to pro-
i describe test economic conditions,
ustrv. |;At least 100 people were arrested
n coilK) an '^ f° ur people were injured in vio-
L lemc in the capital and at least two
Ij northern cities during a 24-hour
M 1 j ! general strike called by leftist labor
M or unions to protest high unemploy-
ot secretiT
■ hands ofl
n the aeifi!
ing indw
n g-
im
ment and annual inflation of more
than 100 percent.
Just hours before the strike be
gan, suspected terrorists dynamited
an American culture center, election
offices and banks in four Peruvian
cities. One woman was injured.
Police attributed the bombings to
Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla
group waging a 4-year-old war
against the Peruvian government.
On Thursday, police fired subma
chine guns into the air to drive away
workers and students who built bar
ricades of boulders and smouldering
tires on streets north of the capital.
At the Dos de Mayo Plaza, where
unions are headquartered, police in
armored cars fired tear gas and wa
ter cannon to break up a rally by
more than 500 workers chanting
“national strike.”
Similar incidents were reported at
the National Engineering Univer
sity, where police said students set a
passenger bus on fire. Protestors
also burned buses.
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Feb. 25, 1985
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March 19, 1985
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Cooke did say, however, that the
networks chose this year to show less
of the convention than they have in
the past.
This happened , he said, probably
because they knew there would be
no extended balloting and that the
viewers were not really interested in
the opening speeches of the conven
tions.
“I hope at least one network has
the sense to say that they won’t
spend all the time, money and en
ergy that has been spent in election
coverage in the past,” he said.
Cooke, a former journalist, was
born in Manchester, England, in
1908. He worked as a correspondent
in the United States for more than
forty years, has published 10 books
and is best known as the host of the
PBS series “Masterpiece Theatre.”
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Budget
Reagan freezes spending
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President
Reagan directed his advisers Thurs
day to cut spending enough to re
duce the deficit by half in three years
and has decided to freeze total gov
ernment spending in the 1986 fiscal
year to 1985 levels, an administra
tion official said.
The official, who asked not to be
identified, said that Reagan made
the decision to freeze spending at a
meeting with his chief fiscal advisers
where he tentatively approved an ar
ray of cuts in government programs.
The president will meet again
with his so-called budget “core”
group Friday to wrap up this phase
of the budget process.
Reagan’s directive to his advisers
came just hours after Republican
congressional leaders warned that
any plan that slashes such politically
sensitive areas as Medicare, Civil
Service and veterans’ benefits must
be accompanied by scaled-back mili
tary spending to stand a chance of
passage on Capitol Hill.
The admonition, which prompted
a sharp retort by Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger, came as Reagan
prepared to give broad direction to
his advisers on a budget that would
cut spending by as much as $45 bil
lion in fiscal 1986, $85 billion in
1987 and $110 billion in 1988.
While the means of achieving
those targets remained undecided,
Sen. Robert Packwood, R-Ore., said
the goal described by budget direc
tor David Stockman was to reduce
the deficit — now projected to stick
in the $200 billion range for the next
few years — to $ 100 billion, or 2 per
cent of the gross national product,
by 1988.
“He said, ‘Folks, let’s face up to it.
If we’re going to get it down on
spending, we’re not talking about 5
percent off this or 6 percent off
that,”’ Packwood said, quoting Stock-
man. “We’re talking about eliminat
ing programs.”
Congressional leaders said Stock-
man had determined that halving
the deficit by 1988 through spend
ing cuts alone would require the abo
lition of 15 to 20 programs, many
with powerful constituencies.
Rather than aiming at social wel
fare programs, as was done four
years ago, the Reagan-Stockman
plan zeroes in on subsidies and mid
dle-class benefit programs, includ
ing farm supports, mass transit assis-
tance, the Small Business
Administration and the Export-Im
port Bank, congressional leaders
said.
The only area held sacrosanct, is
Social Security. While Reagan ruled
out any actual reduction in defense,
pressure has been building for a mil
itary increase less than the 14 per
cent sought by Weinberger.
The COP leaders made the case to
Reagan that in order to sell any defi
cit-reduction plan, the elimination of
C opular programs would have to be
alanced by restraint in defense
spending.
House GOP leader Robert Michel
of Illinois said the meeting was
marked by a “rather heated dis
cussion” on defense, with he and
others at odds with Weinberger over
the need to scale back growth in the
Pentagon budget.
Aggie Band
fields fewer
men this year
A quick count of the the Aggie
Band at halftime this weekend will
reveal that the crowd-pleasing unit is
smaller than it has been in recent
years.
“Our ideal number of men to field
is 303, but this year we are marching
with only about 260 members,” says
band director Colonel Haney.
Haney, director for 13 years, says
smaller classes have caused the de
crease in numbers over the last seve
ral years.
“We just have a small senior class
this year, and when you have smaller
classes; it affects your numbers for
four years.”
Haney says the band marched be
tween 279 and 288 men the last two
years.
“After this class graduates we will
have more than 65 members in each
class,” he says. “I feel reasonably
sure that next year the band will be
back up to the 300 mark.
“We usually have 300 or more
men in the band, but the decrease in
members this year does not affect
our drills and marches,” Haney says.
Police Beat
The following incidents were
reported to the University Police
Department through Thursday.
MISDEMEANOR THEFT:
; * A gray Sears 10-speed bicy
cle was stolen from outside the
♦ $70 in cash was stolen from a
student’s room in Crocker Hall.
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